The Mori Art Museum (森美術館, Mori Bijutsukan) is a contemporary art museum founded by the real estate developer Minoru Mori. It is located in the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower in the Roppongi Hills complex, a commercial, cultural, and residential mega-complex in Tokyo, Japan. The museum's primary focus is large-scale international exhibitions of contemporary art, though it also has a permanent collection of art from Japan and the wider Asia Pacific region.[1]
The museum was founded and developed based on Mori's belief that "culture shapes a city's identity,"[2] and as a result offers varied programming that works to cater to a wide-ranging and diverse audience, "from children to older adults, and from locals to international visitors."[3] In 2015, the museum underwent major renovations, and simultaneously revised its mission statement in an effort to reflect the expansion and changing landscape of the 'Global art' scene in the previous decade. At the same time, the museum introduced several new program series to supplement the existing rotation of internationally contemporary-themed exhibitions: MAM Collection, MAM Screen, and MAM Research.[2]
Since opening in 2003, the Mori Art Museum has held exhibitions featuring a number of internationally-renowned artists from Japan and beyond, including Yayoi Kusama, Ai Weiwei, Bill Viola, Cao Fei, Anish Kapoor, and Jeff Koons.[4] Today, MAM is one of Tokyo's most popular art museums, and in 2018 had brought in 13.5 million visitors from around the world.[3]